Statutory holidays may become less sacred in Canada depending on the outcome of a committee meeting planned for Thursday at Toronto City Hall.

The shopping-on-holidays debate has raised the alarm of the Canadian Auto Workers, though, which has argued that a proposal to let stores throughout the city stay open on Victoria Day will be the first domino to fall, ultimately resulting in the elimination of rules that guarantee most retail workers eight days off per year.

Several exemptions are already in place for designated tourist areas in Toronto, thanks to a 2006 decision that exempted it from Ontario’s Retail Business Holidays Act, which keeps most store doors closed throughout the province on the final day of long weekends — except the first Monday in August — plus Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Good Friday.

But the Toronto Eaton Centre will break with custom next year by staying open on Easter Sunday for the first time ever.

Mall stores were once closed on every other Sunday until Bob Rae’s provincial NDP government allowed a trial in December 1991 — which didn’t disturb the peace enough to prevent full-on seven-day shopping by June 1992.

The legacy of the nationwide Lord’s Day Act, which was repealed in the aftermath of the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms some 30 years ago, has continued to linger in several provinces despite many reforms since.

The conversation seems outdated to many who are accustomed to online shopping at any time, let alone the growing number of professions in which there is no such thing as a set schedule, or the numbers who work in all the industries that operate beyond traditional business hours.

If emergency workers, cab and bus drivers, fast-food workers, small business owners and (cough) journalists all work the holidays, should brick and mortar stores be the last to adhere to a grandfathered clock?